it is almost. like a i don't know whether you call it the death blow or certainly yet another domino that's. disrupting and impacting negative we do lives of average greek people and it goes does anybody care about that other than the greek people it doesn't seem to be registering you know at the higher circles of power and wealth in the world right it's a snuff film the folks in the i.m.f. the c b the troika and in berlin they get off on watching this for the whole country die speaking of go back to energy here for a second it's not just we know that gasoline consumption is tanking also energy across the board is is dropping off in terms of demand not tell us about gasoline and other energy consumption data in america and what this is telling us well if you track what master card sales again stations those sales have been

declining for forty seven weeks straight. and in terms of gasoline consumption it's been it's like kind of fell off a cliff in the last few months and energy consumption has been dropping since you know the housing bubble popped in two thousand and seven so the who energy complex is showing you know unprecedented declines in the u.s. and yet we're being told by the standard you financial pundits and you know financial media and our political class that the economy's growing and we're adding jobs and everything's great and it's all like well wait a minute those two things i can both cannot be true because in an expanding economy people use more energy i mean that's that's common sense and it's the data proves it and that contract ing economy people use less energy so somebody is lying and i don't think it's the energy statistics well we were talking earlier about the role of the rise of the the spy agencies in america living particularly in the

washington area they can walk to work they don't need to drive they can get their instructions on how to spy on people illegally they can go to a neighbor's house and spawn each other they can concoct new stuff film scenarios for countries around the world so they don't need a car there it's energy independent there are so tightly clustered into a cluster of a nest of spying and larceny which is washington now how much it looks like there really are banging the drum for war with iran. is it is that pretty much that the motivation there is again to secure energy supply even though the energy consumption is falling off they still want to can control supplies to spawn the iranian war drums i wonder also if it's just to just to keep prices at one hundred bucks a barrel so everybody in that energy complex and the saudis and everybody's benefiting from it and. because the rule of law. used to be awash in oil in terms

of like the storage capacity serve our full and who with the u.s. dropping from twenty one million barrels a day to eighteen million barrels a day and other nations showing similar declines i mean those are significant declines in demand and so we'll shouldn't be a hundred dollars a barrel and so you wonder if this constant like the political tension isn't practiced a way to make sure that the profit margin say stay immense you know for everybody involved in the petroleum complex now as a countervailing force and all that's in the economy in the u.s. . this sudden emergence of pop if you well and social networking stocks on nasdaq. facebook's about to go public apple computer new all time high worth five hundred billion dollars now this is i think where a lot of people point to and they say look look at this this is well who we are

this is a this is the growth story where where do they get that wrong to get it right in the. revenue model of facebook and zynga and the social media which is basically advertising in other words facebook is worth because it's based on three billion in basically advert revenues. and so is that a model that is related or similar to intel which pulls in you know twenty five billion in revenues making real things are apple with revenues fifty billion plus based on making real things in china so i think there's a total miscalculation on i mean how much revenue can be generated from adverts you know advertising is a small part of the global economy and so yeah it's a visible part but is that a revenue model that's going to construct trillions of dollars of value i don't think so apple of course does does manning from

a factor of products. now they've come under fire recently for the labor conditions in their chinese plans and if you saw the new york times story but they're talking about how steve jobs the late steve jobs when he was putting the i phone together he was saying you just can't build something like that the united states because you need you don't have in china they can put together five thousand workers overnight practically and he says those jobs are never coming back so is this basically even though of apple's got one hundred more than one hundred billion dollars in cash and if they made the phones in the united states it would add something like a hundred bucks per one thousand dollars phone it isn't can they really get away with that justifiably that they're sitting on one hundred billion in cash they don't employ anybody united states on the manufacturing side and they're trying to sell us this idea that you know intellectual property which is coming under fire itself from all the people and sup

a crowd is somehow going to sustain the economy going forward to see that i think we're what we're really seeing and other people are commenting on the same thing is the hollowing out of the u.s. economy and the replacement of actually producing goods and services with financialization so and the propaganda that this is a wonderful thing a lot of people did drink the kool-aid because they saw their house rising by hundred grand a year and they took out fifty grand in a you know home equity line of credit and they were living the high right fender and everyone said it was going to you know keep going forever so and that's kind of a metaphor for the whole u.s. economy good that the big money is made in financial izing things and just that the basis of a strong economy when you when you no longer make anything and there's no incentives to make anything and i think that's where steve jobs was making a point that he he failed to make to carry through to the next step was why are its

why are the incentives to ship the. obs overseas why are there so few incentives to create anything and produce anything anymore in the states now speaking of jobs thirty six billion. dollars in new airport security fees. for the of these to basically tollbooths now what is going on here because the entire economy is becoming riddled with the is shakedowns. is that sustainable that's a that's a brilliant term for it because if you you add in like what i call the junk fees you know like now you've got a parking ticket that used to be twenty bucks now it's sixty five dollars so yeah the shakedown mentality. is is it's rampant and i know one hundred people i mean i just saw statistic that u.s. airlines are flying the least number of flights since two thousand and one and you wonder gee is there

a connection between people deciding they don't want to play anymore and you know they're going to shake down yeah i notice also that the report just came out that the number of people americans who are renouncing their u.s. citizenship and moving to different countries because of the political oppression in the united states has never been higher says they started keeping records i mean would it make sense let's say for a country like iceland who got totally screwed by the global banking system to open up to economic censorship for twenty or thirty thousand dollars anyone can be a citizen of iceland you know get the vote but you do get to have the that passport in place to there turn around and renounce the present state when it doesn't that good economic sense is not a good business model that would ruin it marketing strategy and make it open offices in l.a. new york shanghai and beijing because you know china is not as stable as everybody thinks and people are buying houses in vancouver british columbia you know to establish themselves so yeah you can get

a very nice chunk of that market yet why can't citizenships trade on an exchange like everything else if they're so keen on financial lies in every little fricken part of our lives why can't i buy some my own citizenship and go wherever the country is that's offering me a nice mix of civil rights and entitlements so-called program i don't have to be stuck in a frickin police state what these guys spying on me twenty four seventh's so that somebody in hollywood can get closer to scarlett johansson. i think it's a group. and he could probably get decent form you get like a three percent discount or ten percent discount this one time you're icelandic so this is shipped and then part of the do as you said would be that we guarantee we're not going to spy on you and there has to be some guarantee of of civil liberties in the deal well run time trials us with thanks so much for being on the kaiser report thank you max george enjoyed it very much as always and that's how to do it for this edition of the kaiser report with me max kaiser and stacey everett

our thank my guests charles who smith trust i mean email please decide to report it r t t v dot ru until next time x. guys are saying bye i'll.

believed to top problem pressure grows on the regime in syria with fears that if it falls the nation's key ally iran could be let's try and propelled into action. giving a voice to a lot feels a russian minority the baltic states votes on whether the language spoken by a third of its population should are enough the status. and the idea of euro unity hold strong despite the region's crumbling finances some schools are accused of brainwashing children to believe the project is infallible.

using common broadcasting to you lot from the heart of moscow on karan taraji with crisis locked damascus feeling the squeeze from within the country and abroad it's crucial ally in the region is also feeling the strain experts warn about the collapse of the syrian regime would be a devastating blow to iran making extremely isolated and compelled to act artie's laura smith reports. iran's military is put through its paces but how long will this carry on being a drill as the conflict in syria gets bloodier by the day western powers range against president assad ally iran the strategic position looks increasingly shaky which some suggest is no coincidence there is a proxy conflict between israel and its western allies and iran which basically

only has one ally in the region which is the syrian republic so if you can get syria away from iran either through a diplomatic deal which they're trying for many years all through regime change which seems to be the direction of travel now that would definitely weaken iran and all roads in the middle east right now do seem to lead back to tehran experts are calling the last thing deployed and hope that bring down throw it rainy and how sad and replacing it with the opposition because they've already said they did talk to nancy terror on foreign policy for life i think we hear iran is most powerful ally since the iran iraq war iran and syria have developed all sorts of ties cultural and economic included but crucially iran uses syria as a conduit for support for hezbollah in lebanon and how mass in the palestinian authority both declared foreign terrorist organizations by the u.s. state department take that away and it runs influence in the region could where

you're cornered iran could bite perhaps accelerating the nuclear program projects are raising its. interference perceived interference in other countries in the region press bahrain probably lebanon perhaps palestinian territories. and that will be the way that iran will react so you can make a case for suggestion that the removal of assad will make iran even more protective or even more dangerous it's a knife edge situation and one which worries more than. carious is events in syria worse than the us even says israel could attack iran in a matter of months the possibility of a conflict between major western powers and iran becoming a conflict between the world's major powers is almost a rising storm clouds massing over the region reports of emerge that the qatari and saudis are already funding arming and covertly operating with the syrian opposition

iran looks increasingly isolated with a hostile israel and the. north of me on t.v. . they are states are calling for creating humanitarian corridors in syria which some fear could open the door to foreign intervention but asia times correspondent pepe escobar says it's already under way. there is already a foreign military intervention going on don't forget that may talk they have a command and control center in the heart type province so the turkey very close to the third to syrian border this is a conduit for intelligence going but of course requests for those weapons will force and these weapons are trying then sleezy by the gulf cooperation gulf especially to the saudis but specially to the qataris were actively involved weaving intelligence as well and with more needs of the same trainers on the ground gave us they have another conduit through the lebanese border the syrian national

council for instance they are supported directly by the nigger such goes in david taylor by the turkish government and by the qataris and there's also the free syrian army which heaver that i would see all by those analysts in europe see that it's not meet and it's not an army it's a bunch of the realist infiltrated by people feel. that we salafi jihadists so decide if there is already there now this is a souped up shadow war build with the civil war which the only people who will lose you know this are this so-called syrian people that once in a while. muster pieces of the democracy or mediocrities like cover and suckers you refer to that was asia times correspondent pepe escobar talking to us from bangkok . latvia set to decide whether russian should become the country's second official

language authorities claim a threatens national integrity despite russians making up a third of the population and as alexander reports this referendum is just the first step to ending decades long discrimination. lady from russian minority says his country's government has gone too far having lived in lot of his life it was only recently that he managed to exchange a temporary residence permit to a passport but now this father of three faces another hurdle for his family this time and that his children and their education was a pass through legislation that school schools sixty percent of the lessons must be taught in latin language but excuse me chemistry biology and physics it's difficult to get it even in your own language and it does create a lot of problems for the students at the moment and of course it. is their results

it was the threat that these schools where at least some lessons are taught in their native russian would be closed down for good that scared the russian minority which constitutes one third of the country's population they initiated a referendum on making. second state language something radical right wing parties called a threat to national integrity to fit into this vote is against our constitution which says life is a man a national state and always we it splits our society which has to have one solid foundation but if you are not to it to be like russia. going to russia and leave us be. at least three quarters of a million people must vote yes for a constitutional change to take place but with support predicted to be just that seems to be unlikely the outcome however could have been different if another three hundred twenty thousand residents were allowed to vote those are ethnic russians

who spare and grandparents came here after nine hundred forty five they were denied citizenship after laundry became independent and are still carrying allien passports people who are gaining independence because. and the huge bulk of people who are right now ellen's also voted for him anyway and afterward say when a friend is in the shit and it's a fraud it's a problem of this society it's a problem of mutual trust it's a problem of relations between the state and vested minorities the newly appointed council of europe's commissioner for human rights believes the vote will not solve the discrimination problem and that its readers handling of the russian community that should be changed to give the human rights aspect of stateless children being born in latvia. the clear norms in the convention on the rights of the child that every child has a right to citizenship from birth regulating language use in the private sphere this also has human rights implications raise issues of proportionality here i

think that things should be reviewed though it is widely accepted here that the russian language referendum will fail the russian minority hopes that the vote will bring their struggle out of the shadows and force the government to at least open a dialogue about these russians are contemplating another vote to introduce changes into the citizenship law that is to abolish the so-called alien passports and grant citizenship to those who are living with it and many say in this case they have a good chance of succeeding as they would only need a little more than two hundred thousand positive votes let's. see reporting from reader in latvia. there with r t coming up in the next few minutes as healthy living becomes more fashionable rochelle's organic farming looks to cash in but then depend on online shops aiming to challenge supermarkets supremacy also. chinese people are very dangerous why what is made you think bad have you ever been

personally threatened by a chinese parrot them. so why do you feel that way. they know kung fu while moscow and beijing his voice is growing louder in the international arena we ask people on the streets if there is good reason to fear the two countries. greece is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy the future of bailed out portugal is uncertain and the single currency itself could be in trouble the ranks of people writing off the euro zone and even the european project itself are only swelling in number so perhaps that's why the message for united europe is being pushed on an all new platform the classroom tests are so he reports. what do you know about your country and the capital is aroma. with. the. spanish french english and a bit of italian these youngsters are attending one of the fourteen european schools set up primarily to educate children of e.u.

stuff we are the only system which is able to provide education in twenty three different languages you know that. is united in their city and that's what would leave every day school but outside the classroom reality says otherwise for now differences seem to transcend unity critics along accuse the e.u. of brainwashing children through education par for amelia that they claim promote a stormy eyed vision of the e.u. a comment from a european commission representative at an education fair appears to support that point do you think that will succeed to convince people about how do you remember the european union if it were not was fairly enough when you were young. prejudice is the art of the work because there's no push to export concepts from

the european school model international curriculums apply now live in a two thousand and eleven report and later adopted by parliament. the european parliament repeats its request to the member states to promote the inclusion of the specific subject on the background goals and functioning of the european union and its institutions which will help young people feel more involved in the process of european integration school curricula responsibility of individual member states to tailor to their own needs and their own classrooms and the e.u. should not get involved in dictating what individual schools teach you know we don't want to see european money wasted on pouring out. pouring out to you propaganda into our schools we see as part of our role to explain to citizens regardless of age how this thing works why we have the european union why it's a good thing but the aim is more information not not kind of propaganda or you know sort of brainwashing exercise that's not what we told him all the objectives of the

european school are to encourage european and global perspective and to promote the emergence of a european identity from an early age but the question is why does it stop being education and start being a propaganda when the suggestion is being made that a better europe is automatically more europe then i have a problem with that as do angry any p's who say that targeting youngsters and their education with a potentially one sided political view may just be a little too said mr tester cilia r.t. brussels there were flying fireworks and scenes of jubilation on the streets of libya as the country first marked the anniversary of the uprising that toppled colonel gadhafi but a year on it's the militia that's in charge of almost every aspect of life the national transitional council is accused of being weak and able to control them there are also reports of torture and abuse against the remaining gadhafi loyalists

libya's leaders say they are willing to integrate the militias into the security services but anti-war activist jim brown says for now these are just empty words. the chair of the national transitional council that was the body that was particularly by act by nato during the seven months of bombing when he said in benghazi we almost as a new year's message. he said libya faced the prospect of either all violent suppression of the militias or as he said civil war and break up you can hear a lot of a lot of libyans saying well we didn't get rid of gadhafi in order to have this vote voice comes across nothing has happened they were supposed to integrate the militias into the the supposed national law me in the supposed national police force and just by the very limited newspaper reports you know i am seeing that very very few people join in that you have this creation of the federation of the

western militias a few days ago of one hundred militias in the west of libya and that really does seem to be a step on the road to the breakup of libya into at least two parts western a stiff not more. tens of thousands of people have been rallying across russia to support prime minister putin's political course and his bid for presidency next month in the premier's native st petersburg some sixty thousand people gathered in the center of the city they chanted slogans and brandished russian flags and banners in support of london opposed to a number of the city's prominent citizens also address the crowds the demonstrators spoke out against social disorder under volution in the country saying they wanted a strong and stable russia but country also saw several mass rallies against the current leadership after last december's parliamentary elections which protesters claim was raped tens of thousands are expected to gather again to call for fair elections at the end of february. some other news making headlines around the globe

this hour police in senegal fired tear gas on crowds of protesters who hurled stones and set up barricades in response the demonstrations were against current president the law wade running for a third term as head of state the constitution allows for only two stretches in office but a court cleared him to run again as he took office before the term limit was put in place at least four people have died in the protests since the began last month. pope benedict has appointed twenty two new cardinals and the vatican the main role of the elite club of catholic figureheads is to advise the current pope and choose his successor almost a quarter of cardinals are now from italy decreasing the chance that the next pope could be from another country a situation that has roused accusations of bias that ceremony has been clouded by embarrassing leaks of internal documents alleging corruption among top clerics.

friends and family are gathering in newark new jersey to say their last goodbyes to pop icon whitney houston the funeral service will be held at the church where she sang in the choir as a child found started to pay their respects on friday leaving flowers and balloons on the church steps a six time grammy award winner was found in a bath tub at a beverly hills hotel last week. there's more land in russia than in any other country in the world but people especially in big cities struggle to find fresh farm produce however the supremacy of processed supermarket food could soon be over as a growing appetite for a gang of products means more and more people are taking up farming but there is so a long way to go as artie's that reports. feast for the eyes but not necessarily for. many would be shocked to find out what exactly makes its way onto our plate. if only people knew what their sausage is made of all how they your get was bottled it would be very.